Ya Bezzer!

We only lost on penalties last time.

A win would put us right back in there with Partick, Dundee and Kilmarnock. St. Mirren play Kilmarnock so someone, or both, drop points in that one and Partick have Celtic. Ross County have Inverness and Dundee have Dundee Utd. Next week is a big opportunity for us.

We were definitely pressing the opposition much higher up the pitch which was pretty successful for us. Contrast with the Celtic match where time and time again we allowed Ambrose and van Dijk to bring the ball out from the back. Unfortunately in the second half we just stopped doing that. I'm sure the manager will have pointed that out. Law has been a lot better in recent matches but for me he lacks the level of technique you need to play at a higher level. Erwin has been poor lately. With striker sometimes they just need a goal and they find their confidence again but he's not going to get many better chances than he had today.

Partick fans on P&B were complaining because he didn't start today.

I think it's Higginbotham we hate. On the second half, we've hardly had any possession but at the end of the day its two clean sheets and hardly any dangerous moments. Not brilliant football by any means but right now we need points and that's what we've got.

Every points a prisoner for us this season. Wouldn't be too disappointed with a point because Thistle are no push overs, especially on recent form. Another win would be great. What we don't want to do is lose this because a 10 point gap* is going to take a pretty major change in form, one way or the other, to claw back. *effectively with goal difference.

We filled the Spice of Life stand last time for a midweek League Cup tie so I wouldn't risk it. I reckon we will sell out the tickets.

I think this is pretty much the sensible thing to do here. Should benefit all parties.

Everybody played everywhere under Gannon. He did play in front of the defence and played very well there but he also played at right back under Gannon. In fact I'm pretty sure his debut was at right back after Steven Saunders got injured close to kick off.

Getting to the byline! It frustrates the life out of me when players, wingers even, cross the ball from the 18 - 20 yards out. I'm absolutely certain we could get at least 10 extra goals a season if the manager banned crosses from these areas and made the players take another couple of strides down the park. When you hit a cross as an attacker you need to hit it away from the defenders not straight into them. It's so easy for them to defend when you hit a straight ball into the box. Get to the byline! It's not just a Motherwell thing either, it's across the game. People keep going on about the technical standard being higher than ever but for me the standard of crossing is much, much poorer. The other thing we should do is ban kick outs from the goalkeeper. Everything should get played out from the back. Two simple things that would make us a hell of a lot better than we have been this season.

Goal difference rather than goals for. They have score 11 more and conceded 7 less. Also noticed that Partick have only conceded more than 1 goal once in the last 9 matches so they are obviously pretty tight at the back.

Think it's 1 defeat in 7 for Partick, pretty good going considering they don't have many 'star' players, it's a journey man squad really. They are also 18 goals better off than us this season. Another 6 pointer for us. A Partick win would put them 9 points clear of us and that would isolate us when I think we should be trying to pull away from the bottom spots. Just look at St. Johnstone, a couple of weeks ago they looked in trouble, now they are Top 6 with a gap. That's what a good run of 5 or 6 games can do in this league. A win for us would put us in the nice position of having 3 wins and 1 draw from our last 6, with a narrow defeat against Celtic in there as well. Surely confidence would start to blossom again.

Didn't think anyone really stood out on performance and I can't give it to Josh Law because he was completely ineffective all first half. I'm giving it to Sutton for putting the ball in the net. Might be a very important goal come May.

On the whole John Sutton debate it's worth noting John Sutton is 2 goals away from breaking Tommy Coyne's 59 league goals in the top flight record and becoming our 2nd highest scorer since our promotion back in the mid eighties. Stevie Kirk is our top league scorer in that time with 63 goals, so Sutton needs another 6 league goals this season to break a long standing record. Certainly doable.

Hateley was up and down and he finished his career at Motherwell as the poorest first pick player in a very good team. How do you judge someone in those circumstances? Perhaps people were harsh to judge him against other very good players. Perhaps it was right to pinpoint the weakest area of the side that could be improved. A difficult one but I'm sure a problem we would all like to have had this season. Sutton, I mentioned in my 'match report'. I think most of what you said is true but I still have concerns about our mobility up front and you have to remember that he did go 8 matches without a goal. Sutton is a good striker if we are creating lots of chances but we haven't been doing that this season so, harsh as it may seem, it's easier to replace one player than alter the whole style of the team. However he has two goals in two weeks now and that with his past record should see people get off his back a bit. Hopefully things turn round now across the board, John Sutton included.

To be fair I think nearly every player in the team slows things down. They all want an extra touch, they all want to pick a pass, when good football is played instinctively. Because no one wants to make THE mistake they are all playing it safe and as a result we don't create anything because the play is too slow. Lasley is certainly guilty of that but I think so is most of the rest of the team. Your other two points - definitely. Maybe it's worth noting that our last really poor season was the Malpas season when Hammell was down at Southend. Coincidence?

"Jim showed me how to do that in training"

Well it wasn't pretty and it wasn't even deserved but we got the three points and that's all that really matters because we've opened a wee gap up on the bottom two now and hopefully we can move forward from here. In terms of performance it was very similar to the Ross County match. The team looked very nervous and inhibited and it was obvious players were lacking confidence and didn't want to make mistakes, which is of course when players do make mistakes. We created very little and I thought that the team Baraclough put out didn't really work. Ainsworth looked very uncomfortable down the left and didn't have much impact on the match, and Reid behind him was also playing on his wrong foot which didn't help. As a result we didn't get any width down the left hand side. Likewise there was a problem on the right. Ferguson is a rookie and can be excused but he sat very deep and was obviously worried about leaving a space behind him when we really need our full backs getting us up the field. In front of him Josh Law offered nothing in terms of giving us an attacking right wing option. As a result we were getting bogged down in a congested middle area and created next to nothing. The most obvious talking point in the first half was the Thompson red card. It was a bad tackle but I was surprised when the referee gave a straight red. He may have been right or wrong to do so because I didn't get a good enough view of it to say one way or the other but Alan Muir's overall performance was terrible. He made mistakes all afternoon and it really takes a special kind of ineptitude to stick out as bad among the throng of referees that we have currently. Second half St.Mirren went closest to scoring when they hit the bar and it came down off/in front/behind the line. Impossible to tell from the far end but we definitely got luck one way or the other as it looked a goal all the way until it crashed off the bar. However that was really St. Mirren's best chance and they had no real cutting edge. The main problem wasn't so much St. Mirren creating chances as much as us not creating anything ourselves although we did improve slightly with the two half time substitutions. However the best (only?) move of the match got us the goal. A great wee triangle move between Ojamaa, Law and Sutton. I've given Sutton some stick this season but that's two huge goals he's scored for us in two weeks. After we scored St.Mirren's heads went down and they looked rattled and I though we might get a second but it wasn't to be and we were under a little bit of pressure in the final moments but nothing too hair raising. Overall 3 points were crucial and more important than a good performance. It's just disappointing we were only one kick away from getting the full 6 points out of these two matches but at least we have something to build on now and I think, well hope, that playing teams outside the bottom 2 will see the team loosen up a bit, take some pressure off them so they don't look so frightened to play football.

Pulling one performance out of four is fine if you want to look at individual performances rather than a trend. Last week wasn't the best but we've been better over the last 5 weeks or so. And we did score 2 goals when we struggled to score any earlier in the season.

I would rather it was wrapped up by half time.

12 matches under McCall 7 points from possible 36 OR 0.58 points per game. 4 matches under Black 4 points from possible 12 OR 1 point per game. And we were one kick of the ball away from getting an extra 2 points last week. The improvement is already there to see if people could pull themselves out of their self imposed suicide watch. With a new permanent manager let's cross our fingers and hope we can improve even further. If I was the manager I'd be asking the players to aim for 40 points this season. So that's 29 points from 21 remaining fixtures, a relatively small improvement over our recent form with Black, who had some tricky fixtures lets remember. If we can do that we'll almost certainly be safe at the end of the season by a decent margin.

Was at Hibs, wasn't he?

...........Carswell.......Lasley............. ............................................. Ainsworth.........Vigurs...........Ojamaa.... ............................................. ..................Sutton..................... Not much wrong with that, if you can get the confidence up and get them playing to anywhere near the standard of the past couple of years.

If we can't beat St. Mirren then we are fucked. Simple as that. And that's why I'm going to the match expecting victory, spending money I don't really have at Christmas even though I've been to Hamilton, Kilmarnock and Partick this season. BARACLOUGH P1 W1.

To be fair I think Black had a point about the announcement. On the morning of a game? An important game against a relegation rival? Obviously it disturbs the preperation, is a bit disrespectful towards Black who is taking the team and interviewed for the job and everyone knows professional footballers are like skittish horses and it doesn't take much to unsettle them. When we were enduring McCall earlier in the season everyone was bringing up his previous record in defence. Well newsflash, McCall's previous record is also Black's previous record. Also Black made a much better fist in charge of the team this term than McCall did. To be honest I don't know much about what Black does or doesn't do and I suspect most are in a similar position. The scape goat chorus obviously only have two names at the moment - Vigurs and Black.